Sen. Don Gustavson Opposing Question One

State Sen­a­tor Don Gus­tavson of Sparks, Neva­da is the lat­est Neva­da law­mak­er to oppose the Ques­tion One gun con­trol bal­lot ini­tia­tive. Gus­tavson told his con­stituents in an email this week that the gun con­trol mea­sure “goes beyond mon­i­tor­ing pur­chas­es by plac­ing empha­sis on trans­fers, a process designed to turn peace­able civil­ians into crim­i­nal sub­jects by gum­ming up their logis­ti­cal abil­i­ty to han­dle arms.”

The Ques­tion One gun con­trol bal­lot ini­tia­tive, which is large­ly bankrolled by for­mer New York City May­or Michael Bloomberg, would impose new gov­ern­ment man­dates and fees on near­ly all pri­vate trans­fers of firearms in Neva­da. Gus­tavson joins Sen­a­tor James Set­telmey­er and a grow­ing list of Neva­da sher­iffs in oppos­ing the Ques­tion One gun con­trol bal­lot ini­tia­tive.

“Ques­tion One appears on the sur­face to be a com­pas­sion­ate, anti-crime pro­pos­al to stop bad guys. In fact, it does no such thing,” said Gus­tavson. “Crim­i­nals do not com­ply with statutes and will con­tin­ue mak­ing trades on the black mar­ket or acquir­ing firearms by means of theft.”

A new study done by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh backs up Gustavson’s posi­tion. The study finds that near­ly 8 in 10 gun crimes are com­mit­ted with ille­gal­ly-pos­sessed guns. The WaPo, which is usu­al­ly in favor of more gun con­trol laws, was forced to admit the find­ings “…rein­force a com­mon refrain among gun rights advo­ca­cy groups. They argue that since crim­i­nals don’t fol­low laws, new reg­u­la­tions on gun own­er­ship would only serve to bur­den law­ful own­ers while doing lit­tle to com­bat crime.”

“We wel­come Sen­a­tor Gus­tavson in our grass­roots fight to pro­tect our Neva­da free­doms,” said Robert Uithoven, cam­paign direc­tor for NRA Nevadans for Free­dom, a grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion work­ing with state law­mak­ers, sher­iffs and oth­er elect­ed offi­cials to defeat Ques­tion One. “As more Nevadans learn the truth about how Ques­tion One will cost them their time, mon­ey, and free­dom, they are reject­ing it.”